So we’ve got a new variant becoming the dominant strain in the Northeast US, and the experts aren’t sure yet whether it’s going to lead to more severe outcomes or not, but there’s some concern there. It’ll be the dominant strain nationally soon.
Meanwhile, Long COVID seems to be becoming more and more of a thing, while the anti-vaxxers get more and more of a foothold and booster rates plummet.
We’ll use this thread to continue to monitor the situation and stay up on the latest news.
I wasnt able to read the old thread much of the last year or two.
long covid is something I think I may be affected by. do they know much about it other than it’s likely a thing?
BIvalent Boosters are now available for 6 mo to 5 year olds. This got like no press at all but I feel like people should know.
My buddy has a child who is about to turn six months. Have you seen any info on whether he has to go OG shot, OG shot, then bivalent booster or are they letting kids go straight to the bivalent?
OG OG then Bivalent if he does moderna. Pfizer I think third dose can be bivalent.
My whole family had COVID 13 months ago then interestingly everyone but me caught it again last month despite me taking zero precautions and being inside house w/ 4 people who were pozz. This time around we didn’t really even realize kids were sick (tough as kids have some sniffles like 90% of time at baseline) and my wife felt bad for about 6 hours instead of 5 days year prior
@BasicBlue this is the new iteration of the famous COVID thread “on the forum” where I got 95% of my COVID info for the first 12-18 months of the pandemic.
cw -
You were one of the most cautious posters during the pandemic. IIRC you only fairly recently went mask off at a poker table. I stopped wearing a mask pretty much as soon as the vaccines rolled out except when in crowded areas like airplanes/airports etc. I don’t know yet if I regret it or not. would you have done anything differently?
I’m still masking in indoor public settings, barring very rare occasions when I can’t or there is huge upside to not masking. I was mask-off after the first booster when the efficacy was high.
The only thing I’d definitely change is N95ing up instead of totally locking down in the early stages of the pandemic, and doing more outdoor stuff since we now know it’s pretty safe. I left a lot of money on the poker table in 2020 and parts of 2021.
It’s hard to say I regret it, given the incomplete info at the time. But with current info I’d change that.
Am I correct that if someone never tested positive for COVID and has since been fully vaccinated there’s no way to know for certain if they ever had active COVID?
I’m not sure from a scientific standpoint, but I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to prove I’ve never had it. I’ve never tested positive and never had symptoms without testing, but it’s impossible to know for sure that I never had it asymptomatically.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve tested rigourously though - once the tests became easily available. I’ve never tested positive once over 200+ tests.
My path was I went early pandemic isolating for about 1 year. Like literally didn’t leave the house for a year except a handful of times that were medical related. Then the vaccine came out and I stopped isolating and just never got sick.
There is a way, or at least there was when I looked into this a year+ ago, to get a test that could determine if your antibodies were from the vaccine or Covid. Don’t think anyone really used it.
I got antibody tested as part of a clinical study for hospital workers in nyc in may or june 2020. I was sure I was asymptomatic and had gotten it, but I was negative.
So the nearest bivalent booster for my 3 year old is almost an hour away. I do not live in a rural area. What. The. Fuck. I’ve been waiting hoping a more local one would open up, but at this point, I think I’m making the drive this weekend because I don’t want to put it off any longer. This fucking country.
I had some issues with this. Almost got screwed over by some tech who didn’t know what they were talking about. Also don’t think they knew I could text her boss’s boss. Having some pull is nice.
What did the tech do wrong? I’m nervous about this every time I take my kids to the pharmacy for the vaccine, that they’re going to give them the adult does or something by mistake.
Tech called me saying they werent doing shots in our age group yet.
If they get an adult dose it’s highly unlikely to matter imo.
You can test the person for antibodies for the capsid protein. People with only vaccination will only have antibodies for the spike protein, but people who are infected will have antibodies to both (even if they’re vaccinated). That test is basically only available to researchers, though.
How long do the antibodies last though? If someone had Covid in 2020 is a test for antibodies to the capsid protein going to show anything in 2023?
Not sure. The antibodies may still be present enough to detect relative to a novel individual, even if they are at a low enough level to not confer much protection against an initial infection. But 2020 is a long ass time away. I don’t know if we have really long time course data. Finding someone who got it in 2020 and definitely never again isn’t going to be easy.